[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get you through your Friday.
Nathan Bush: Today's checkout features three co founders. Harry Dickson, Rory Garten Smith and Elliot Rampano. They're the co founders of Checkmate, an app that plugs into Safari on your mobile to automatically provide savings while you shop. The team has an eclectic mix of talents and backgrounds. One is an entrepreneur and partnerships expert, another a trend setting data scientist, and the third, a former musician who's played Splendor and competed in Ninja Warrior. That's a good checkout. Harry. Elliot, Rory, welcome to the checkout. We have five quick questions. We'll see how quick they are because we've got three people doing it at once, which should be makes for some good banter, I reckon. So let's go number one. What is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online? Elliot, I'm going to start with you.
Elliot Rampono: Oh. So I get roasted a bit for this. So when I spent about 18 months living in San Francisco and I'm like a very frugal person and San Francisco, so crazy expensive. So I wanted to find like a cheap way to eat regularly. So I got into this food supplement called Huel, which is like human fuel, which is kind of based on another one called Soylent, which is based on Soylent Green from that horrible movie. Yeah. So it's basically this meal that you can eat all day. It's sort of like it tastes pretty good, but I think even they recommend don't have this three meals a day. But if you do, you won't get scurvy. It's basically like the pitch and that's what I did. And I lost a lot of weight and it was pretty bad.
Nathan Bush: What does it look like?
Elliot Rampono: I haven't had it in a while. I've left that life behind. Rory still hasn't occasionally.
Rory Garton-Smith: Yeah, it just looks like whey protein. But it has carbs in it as well, basically. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Wow.
Elliot Rampono: Wild.
Nathan Bush: All right, that's good. That fits the criteria of the question. Rory, what about you?
Rory Garton-Smith: So I bought this conch recently and for those who can't see it, it's
Nathan Bush: this massive yellow looking shell, like as big as Rory's head.
Rory Garton-Smith: It's bigger than my head. This thing is huge. And I want to do the thing from Anchorman where he's like, news team assemble. And it just, I will go there. It arrived yesterday. You have to do a Little bit of preparation. So you have to drill a hole in this part here. But this is a real conch found on the beach, like in I don't know where, like somewhere in Africa or something. We've had it shipped out, so it's very, very cool to have it.
Nathan Bush: That's amazing.
Rory Garton-Smith: Yeah, pumped.
Nathan Bush: Where do you even find that?
Rory Garton-Smith: Online Etsy with Checkmate discount.
Elliot Rampono: Get on it.
Rory Garton-Smith: Did you get a discount? I did get a discount.
Nathan Bush: What about you, Harry? Weirdest thing you've ever bought.
Harry Dixon: I love that. I'm probably going to break down the conversation. They're quite high class things. A squatty potty is probably one of the weirdest things. And I love the question at dinner parties, which is like, what's the weirdest thing you bought on Amazon? And a friend goes, gotta change your life. Squatty potty. And so it's like a little stool that you put your legs on that wraps around your toilet.
Nathan Bush: Oh, I had a different vision in
Rory Garton-Smith: my head of what it was, but
Nathan Bush: yeah, that makes sense. So it elevates your legs.
Elliot Rampono: Correct?
Rory Garton-Smith: Yeah.
Harry Dixon: Yeah, it's a game changer. Big fan.
Elliot Rampono: All right.
Nathan Bush: All right. And okay, we'll probably leave that one there. That's a.
Harry Dixon: You did answer the weirdest.
Nathan Bush: No, it was perfect. We've had three perfect answers there, so you guys nailed the brief.
Rory Garton-Smith: Thank you.
Nathan Bush: All right, who is personally. And I know you don't want to take side, but personally, where you shop, who gives? Who is your favorite retailer? Rory, we'll start with you.
Rory Garton-Smith: Culture Kings. I think they nail a niche. Yeah. This is a good answer for the Australian audience. Right. Because they've only recently moved to the US market. But I think they really nail a niche and I think their marketing is excellent and I think their store brand branding is excellent as well. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Are you gonna go visit the new store when you're in Vegas?
Rory Garton-Smith: I didn't know there was a Vegas store. And I would definitely go check that out.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Nice. Good answer, Harry.
Harry Dixon: If you ask my wife, Georgia, she would probably say Gage Roads, which is actually a brewery because I have so much merch from there. But I think for like quality and things that I would probably recommend to friends, especially Americans, is R.M. williams. I think their boots.
Rory Garton-Smith: Yeah.
Harry Dixon: Last your lifetime. So I think that's where I've switched from my purchasing habits entering my 30s, that you go, you know, you need stuff to last. And so that's really where I think they've done a good job.
Elliot Rampono: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Nice. And they've done a great job online too, in the Last few years they've really taken that up to the next level.
Elliot Rampono: Elliot. I'm a bit obsessed with skin care, so for me it's the ordinary for the sort of like the essentials. And then I go esop on birthdays and Christmas. I'll get really nice soaps.
Nathan Bush: Nice. Good answer. Okay, all right, number three, which E commerce practice do you wish was history?
Rory Garton-Smith: Harry?
Harry Dixon: Yeah, I mean there's, there's a few. We look at a lot of them. I'm quite frustrated on how like obviously cogeneration is presented. So I think abandoning carts and getting a deal sent to you I think should just go to in the bin. I think it like promotes bad behavior and yeah, I think it needs to get smarter. So that's just like a top of mind one.
Nathan Bush: But yeah, relevant too.
Rory Garton-Smith: Elliot.
Elliot Rampono: Mine's a bit of a. I think it's a niche one to Australia, but we deal with gift card expiry, which is. I just think that's an insulting notion. I actually, I went to hot yoga the other day and someone had gifted me a hot yoga glass for Christmas, but it actually wasn't last Christmas, it was the Christmas before. Been a crazy year and they had to check and I think it had expired but they let me use it. But I just think the idea, if someone spends money at your store, unless it's been hundreds of years and the value of money has changed, you should honor that.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I think retailers are actually confused about it because the regulations are changing so much and country to country, state to state around how long gift vouchers can be valid for and what are the minimums required. It's changed a lot in the last five years even. I think it's three years minimum now, don't quote me, but. Whereas before they get away with 12 months.
Elliot Rampono: Right, yeah, I think that was it.
Nathan Bush: Rory, what's getting your goat?
Rory Garton-Smith: Similar answer to Harry's on the sort of like store sending your codes thing. And I'd love to build tools to help stores stop doing this SMS marketing so they will immediately start texting you with deals and you stop to unsubscribe. Twofold. One, I think it's a bad way to be marketed too and I think we should be building better tools for stores to do it. Two, I think that SMS needs to die. In general, I'm vocally opposed to very few things actually I love almost everything in the world. I'm very vocally opposed to SMS being used for two factor authentication by banks because I mean, case in point, when I moved to the usa. Telstra gave my Australian mobile number away to a girl in Sydney and now she has my number and she used to get all my codes and stuff and she was very nice. She would like give them to me. But like, the other people have very different experiences. Right. I think SMS needs to die and any marketing practice along with it needs to go.
Nathan Bush: I'll bet given your music history and music scene background, she might got a few random texts here and there. Yeah,
Rory Garton-Smith: I had a singer text me and was like, why are you responding to me? And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, me texting your Australian number, I haven't heard back in weeks or something. And I was like, you were hearing back at all?
Nathan Bush: Hang on, what have I committed to? What? I'm playing. I'm playing again. All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Elliot Rampono: Elliot, this is probably a dorky suggestion, but anytime someone asks me for a book recommendation, I go to a book called the Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It's my favorite book ever. If you like fantasy, you should read it. But it's not like a book about e commerce, so just be aware.
Nathan Bush: Right. An escape book.
Rory Garton-Smith: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful, Rory.
Rory Garton-Smith: Kind of a dickhead answer, but I swear it's really, really good. The Stanford Classical Liberalism initiative hosted Peter Thiel about two months ago and he did a speech called the End of the Future and it is unbelievable. And I recommend anyone go. It's free on YouTube and Spotify. Like go and check it out.
Nathan Bush: Great recommendation, Harry.
Harry Dixon: I guess my favorite podcast is the Chris Sacker episode on this week in Startups. It's a two part with Jason Calacanis. It describes Chris Sacchar. He writes a lot of base capital, but his story is out of this world. And then I just double down on a book because I think it's really good. Is Red Notice and it's Bill Browder, which was like the Minitsky act, which is like essentially like barring like Russians and things in the us But I just finished Freezing order literally last week. And that's the second book in this in the series. And again, both mind blowing stories.
Nathan Bush: Oh, Chance, between the three of you, what a range of inspirational and resources. Thank you very much. Number five, last one for you, finish this sentence. The future of retail is who wants to jump in?
Rory Garton-Smith: Actually savings on iPhone that didn't work at all. I should actually direct the conversation.
Nathan Bush: All right, Roy.
Elliot Rampono: Roy.
Rory Garton-Smith: I said savings on my iPhone just to play the company. But I we probably all three of us would probably say personalized is really the underpinning thesis of what we're building.
Elliot Rampono: Yeah.
Rory Garton-Smith: Beautiful.
Nathan Bush: Personalized commerce. Love it. Harry, Elliot, Rory, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Elliot Rampono: Thanks. Thanks for having us.
Nathan Bush: To hear more from Harry, Rory and Elliot jump back into episode 265 where they share why they swapped traditional marketing for a different approach, and that included a deep discussion around TikTok and some of the strategies that they use. We also talk about how Checkmate reached number one in the US Global app charts over Christmas and how the dream team started taking shape courtesy of a pair of red Doc Martens. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
